Above the toilet, in the powder room at John D. Negroponte's house, a framed political cartoon hangs at eye level. In the cartoon, President Bush is congratulating Negroponte on his job as intelligence czar. Near the president, advisers stand holding memos marked "WMD" and "North Korea." They're blowing bubbles, wearing a dunce cap and a beanie.

Bush: "John, you're now in charge of all my administration's intelligence."

Negroponte: "And where would that be?"

Now, less than two years after becoming the nation's first director of national intelligence, Negroponte is leaving. Tomorrow, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will convene hearings on his nomination as deputy secretary of state. From the outside, it seems like an unusual move, a demotion. Negroponte, 67, is stepping down from a Cabinet-level position as the president's top intelligence adviser and coordinator for all 16 U.S. intelligence services to become the No. 2 at State.

But from the inside of Negroponte's Tuscan, mustard-colored Washington home, the mystery of his career move dissipates with the steam from a pot of Earl Grey tea.

Many decades ago, mainly between 1948 and 1975, orphanages and families that could not afford to raise them sent some 4,000 Greek children to the United States, the Netherlands and other countries for adoption. The children themselves were never asked if they wanted to leave, or if they agreed to lose their Greek citizenship. They knew nothing about the circumstances of their departure. Many were given to families that had no Greek roots, cutting them off not only from the land of their birth but also from their culture, their identity. It is only in recent years that these isolated “lost children” discovered that they were among thousands, protagonists in an unknown but heart-rending episode in the history of the Greeks after the Civil War and during the Cold War. Now, some of them wish to close the circle of their lives with the restoration of their Greek citizenship. One would expect Greece to offer the warm embrace that it denied them when they were born. And yet, it keeps putting up obstacles and dashing hopes.

There is much irony in the fact that services which are notorious for mishandling their records should deny people’s right to their files while demanding full sets of documents from them

“I’ve stopped trying. It hurts too much. It’s broken my heart too many times,” Alexa Maros said during a recent public discussion on the internet hosted by the East Mediterranean Business Culture Alliance (EMBCA). “Self-preservation dictates that I have to stop this quest. I can’t do this alone. But my fondest hope is that together we can get there.” Maros, co-host of the “Persisting” podcast, has been trying to regain her Greek citizenship since 2016, at great cost in terms of dollars and pain. “I have shed many tears in the process. It left me crying and feeling rejected again,” she added. “When I was 8 years old, I asked, ‘Was I that unlovable that I had to be exported?’ The sense of loss can be overwhelming. And the grieving… it’s always there.”

Robyn Bedell, a chef assistant at the University of Connecticut who discovered her Greek family in 2007, added: “I just want to be able to go [to Greece] without a return date if that’s what I want to do.” The discussion was moderated by Lou Katsos, EMBCA’s founder and president. Other participants were: Professor Gonda Van Steen, Koraes Chair, King’s College London, whose 2019 book “Adoption, Memory and Cold War Greece: Kid pro Quo?” uncovered the breadth and depth of the adoptions; Mary Cardaras, academic and writer who has compiled an oral history of the “lost children,” of whom she is one; financial consultant Robert Lipsky; educator Maria Heckinger; and journalist Nikos Konstandaras, who has covered the story since 1995.

Some 700 of the thousands of children who were given up for adoption abroad have shown interest in learning more about themselves and in having their Greek citizenship restored. Of the 3,200 who were adopted in the United States and about 600 who were sent to the Netherlands, some have died; others are unaware of the networks of communication that have been established, while others still have been cut off entirely from their Greek past. The number of those who want to reconnect with Greece should not alarm the officials who are still blocking their access to their personal files, obstructing further research and not processing requests for Greek citizenship.

Introduce…

Fiom is the center of expertise in the field of unwanted pregnancy, distance & adoption and related questions. The starting point of working at Fiom is the right of self-determination of unwanted pregnant women and the right of a child to know where he or she comes from and to grow up while retaining its own identity. Fiom offers information and help with unwanted pregnancies, aftercare in the field of adoption and guides people in their search for biological family in the Netherlands and abroad. We also manage the KID-DNA Database, which enables a match between a donor child and an anonymous donor. We do all this with approximately 80 passionate employees from our offices in 's-Hertogenbosch and Houten and from our home workplaces.

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Korean transnational adoptee Sarah Bowling was adopted to the US in 1974 at age 3 from an orphanage in Busan.

Despite two DNA tests with potential parents in the 1990s — both came out negative — Bowling has not found her birth family.

However, her experience her living in South Korea since 2009 as well as her own birth family search her have inspired her to start a project with a very personal connection.

She recently launched Korea Reconnect, an online database that helps birth parents and adoptees look for each other without revealing their identities.

The database, with information provided both in English and Korean, currently holds hundreds of profiles of birth parents and adoptees, both transnational and local. In some ways, Korea Reconnect works almost like a matchmaking site, she said.

Korean transnational adoptee Sarah Bowling was adopted to the US in 1974 at age 3 from an orphanage in Busan.

Despite two DNA tests with potential parents in the 1990s — both came out negative — Bowling has not found her birth family.

However, her experience her living in South Korea since 2009 as well as her own birth family search her have inspired her to start a project with a very personal connection.

She recently launched Korea Reconnect, an online database that helps birth parents and adoptees look for each other without revealing their identities.

The database, with information provided both in English and Korean, currently holds hundreds of profiles of birth parents and adoptees, both transnational and local. In some ways, Korea Reconnect works almost like a matchmaking site, she said.

Help us fulfill the last wish of Argentine grandmothers

The 'Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo' in Argentina have been looking for their children and grandchildren for years. Children who disappeared during the years of the dictatorship, were robbed and (usually illegally) appropriated in families, whether or not through adoption. Time is running out for these grandmothers. Their greatest wish is to hold these children and grandchildren in their arms.

Silly mothers

Background

During the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983), many children were born in captivity. In most cases, the parents of these children have been killed or have disappeared. It is not clear where the children ended up. In many cases they have been adopted illegally. It is suspected that a number of these also ended up in the Netherlands. In collaboration with HIJOS Netherlands, Fiom tries to trace these children. Everyone has the right to know where he/she comes from.

What fundamental rights do adopted children have? What should you do if your child wants to meet their biological family? Find out here.

Adoption is often a way out for underage boys and girls in situations of vulnerability. Indeed, it’s an essential resource as they have the fundamental right to grow up in a family. In this article, we’ll advise you on what to do if your child is adopted and is interested in looking for their biological mother.

Due to the fact that they’re adopted, these children have another fundamental right. The right to know where they came from. However, although most parents recognize this fact, it often also generates a great deal of fear and doubts about what they should tell their children about their personal history and origins.

In fact, both adoptive families and people who are adopted need the guidance and support of various professionals. Among the specialists involved are psychologists who advise them and help them go a long way in the search for their biological relatives.

“Every single minute matters, every single child matters, and every single childhood matters.”

When Anouk (42) and her partner think she cannot have children, they decide to adopt. Now her (adopted) daughter is in the middle of puberty. Every puberty is intense, but for Anouk it increasingly evokes feelings of guilt.

“I feel guilty about the adoption.”

My girly dream came true

“Nine years ago, my partner and I adopted our daughter. To be honest, at the time we thought I couldn't have children, so our choice was quickly made. We immersed ourselves in the adoption process and were soon allowed to hold our daughter in our arms. Indra was two years old when we adopted her from India. Later I unexpectedly became pregnant with twins, so suddenly my girlish dream came true. I always wanted to have a big family. Have breakfast together at a large table; I had that loving picture in my head.

That my dream came true was great, and the first years I lived on a pink cloud. Now, nine years later, things are a little less rosy than I had hoped or expected. Indra is very curious by nature. For example, she was still very small when she once heard the church bells ringing. She asked if she could go and see where the sound was coming from. I thought she was going to walk to the garden, so without hesitation said she could go. Moments later, I panicked. She had gotten the garden gate open and was already walking towards the end of the street. 'I was allowed to watch, wasn't I?' was her innocent reply.

A Swedish legal expert investigating the country's international adoption practices said South Korea is vital in her probe into alleged falsified origins of children adopted in the 1970s and 80s.

Anna Singer will meet with officials from the government, and a Seoul-based agency that handled adoptions to Sweden to gather details on how South Korea procured and documented children for foreign adoptions on a week-long trip to Seoul.

Singer's investigation is aimed at identifying irregularities in the way Swedish parties handled international adoptions that came from around 80 countries, including whether they were aware that child origins were being fabricated in sending nations.

“Our primary focus is the Swedish organisations and the Swedish actors — what did they do and what did they know?" said Singer, a law professor at Uppsala University, who the Swedish government appointed to lead the investigation in 2021.

She said such findings would be vital in determining whether Sweden had effective safeguards or monitoring measures to ensure South Korean adoptees weren't wrongfully taken from their biological parents.

Cremona – A man and woman from the Cremona area have been sentenced to three months in prison and a fine of 10,000 euros for failing to meet their duty of care and maintenance. The background to the court decision is shocking. The couple are said to have abandoned their adopted son after he was taken into his home just five days earlier.

A 26-year-old Brazilian, who was only ten years old at the time of the events, reported the case. After his adoptive parents turned their backs on him, he lived a poor life and went down the wrong path. For a series of petty thefts, he ended up in prison in Modena. "I ask no pity. I have served my just punishment. But in prison I met someone for the first time who listened to me and who explained my rights and my obligations. The only thing I received from my adoptive parents is my last name," the young man told Corriere della Sera.

Because he met the lawyer Gianluca Barbiero behind bars, who supports him as legal counsel, the Brazilian experienced justice after 16 years - now also in the second instance. The verdict on appeal came in 20221 in Brescia.

On August 30, 2007, the Cremona couple returned to Italy from Brazil with the adoption permit from the São Paulo court in their pockets. On September 4, the husband and wife decided not to adopt the child again. They claimed the ten-year-old had pointed a knife at his adoptive father.

When the Brazilian later filed a complaint, he instead claimed that his adoptive mother hit him with a belt after he argued with the couple's biological son.